Pelosi barely slowed to breathe as she held forth on the issues of the day, from the World Series (she refused her husband’s entreaties to turn off the sixth game and go to sleep) to Occupy Wall Street. “People say, ‘Oh, they don’t have a message,’ ” she said. “They don’t need a message. They’re making a statement.” Although she didn’t have all the details of a recent clash in Oakland between police officers and protesters that left an Iraq War veteran hospitalized, she expressed disapproval of the police’s use of force. “I simply don’t understand why they did it,” she said. “It isn’t, I don’t think, appropriate.”

Pelosi rarely watches television, except for sports, and she hasn’t watched any of the Republican Presidential-candidate debates. She believes that Obama is in better shape than the polls indicate. “The Republicans are helping him a lot,” she said. “The extremists—I don’t like to even use that word—those Republicans going too far, sort of stir up the Democratic base, and point out the urgency.”